Break-dance

Back to F1 - while the crisis talks that took place between FIA and FOTA at the Monaco Grand Prix are likely to get F1 through to the end of the season, the debate about regulations for next season rumbles on. Indeed, the Toyota team has actually come clean and said that a 2010 breakaway championship is one of a number of options that FOTA is considering. We have been here before: in 1980, a stand-off between FIA and FOCA (the Formula One Constructors Association - the 80's incarnation of FOTA) led to the emergence of break-away threats. What can F1 learn from the precedents and politics of 1980s motor sport? Can history provide any lessons to help in eliminating the potential threat of a massive and permanently damaging split in F1? From here, how best should decisions be taken to ensure that FIA and FOTA both emerge from the current impasse, satisfied and having saved face? Is there a role for an independent arbiter, and is this person already in waiting? Could it be Bernie Ecclestone? Should it be Bernie Ecclestone? Or is there a need for someone from outside, and independent of, the sport to become involved? Is the role that Lord Stevens (a former Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Force) played in investigating football player agents for the English Football Association a model that might prove useful in F1? Or is F1's current predicament tantamount to a domestic dispute that is best resolved privately between partners? Whatever the correct course of action, surely the governing bodies and the teams have to get their acts together? At a time of economic hardship, with several sponsors due to withdraw from F1, but with a number of historic teams threatening to withdraw, surely there has to be an obvious, consensual way forward?